


Abnormality

by glimmerglanger



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Ignores Comics and Korra, Mystery, Post-Series, Pre-Relationship, Prompt: Dragged Away, Violence, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 22:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20919296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glimmerglanger/pseuds/glimmerglanger
Summary: Katara ended up in the Fire Nation because she didn’t know where else she wanted to be.The strange, joyous daze they’d all moved in after the immediate end of the war hadn’t lasted nearly long enough. It had faded and dissolved into some strange new normal, one that had ended when she woke up and realized she didn’thaveto keep traveling around from one place to another on Appa.-Written for Whumptober 2019, prompt #6 (dragged away)





	Abnormality

**Author's Note:**

> This is a post-series fic that isn't compliant with the comics of LoK. Written for Whumptober (dragged away).

Katara ended up in the Fire Nation because she didn’t know where else she wanted to be.

The strange, joyous daze they’d all moved in after the immediate end of the war hadn’t lasted nearly long enough. It had faded and dissolved into some strange new normal, one that had ended when she woke up and realized she didn’t _have_ to keep traveling around from one place to another on Appa.

There was no pressing emergency dragging her across the world. They’d done what they’d set out to do and she didn’t really want to keep traveling all the time.

Aang had.

They hadn’t… had kind things to say to one another, the last time they’d spoken, when she’d left to go back to the Southern Water Tribe, to rebuild, to see if she could find her normal there.

It had worked, for awhile. But the frozen vistas, the midnight sun, the lights that played across the sky, they hadn’t felt the same. Sokka wasn’t there most of the time, off with Suki doing one thing or another in the Earth Kingdom. Gran Gran had… her own concerns.

And the villages felt small. People she’d known her entire life felt unfamiliar. They whispered about her, when they thought she wasn’t listening. And so she’d left, after only a few months, striking out again, looking for _something_ that she couldn’t even put a name to.

She ended up in the Fire Nation, drawn by a few invitations she’d received from Zuko, which always left a strange little ache in her stomach.

#

Zuko smiled, when his guards escorted her into the palace, smiled and stood up, ignoring the papers all spread around him on his desk. He said, “Katara. It’s good to see you.” And then his expression had grown serious. “Is something wrong?”

Something was, she was pretty sure. But it was just with her and she didn’t even know what it was. So she said, “No, I just thought I’d visit. See you.” It sounded strange, now that she’d said it out loud. She cast about for something to make everything more normal and gestured at the table. “Working on something interesting?”

He glanced down at the papers. “Maybe,” he said. “Did you ever hear about the Absollian Shipyards?”

#

She hadn’t. She doubted anyone in the Water Tribes had. The Absollian Shipyards, it turned out, had produced warships for the Fire Nation in the early days, after the fall of the Air Nomads.

They’d done a lot of work for years and then they’d been shut down, abruptly, by Zuko’s grandfather. “He ordered them closed completely,” Zuko said, gesturing at the records across the desk. “Had the island they were on mined and ordered that no one enter the area around it on pain of death.”

Katara frowned down at the records. “That’s strange.”

“Yes,” Zuko said. “The island was volcanically active during the time of production. It’s dormant now. Once the heat went away, I suppose they moved the shipyards somewhere else. I think he must have been worried about prototypes or design records getting out.”

She hummed. They were standing close together, examining the papers. She could feel the heat of him all along her side. It was… very distracting. She worked to focus. “Why are you looking into it now?”

He shrugged. Their arms brushed. Her skin _tingled_. “It’s a big island,” he said, spreading out a map, holding it down with his hand. “Currently uninhabited. I was thinking it might make a good… neutral space. For people from different nations to come together.”

She smiled, trailing her fingers over the map of the island, almost brushing his thumb. “That sounds like a nice idea. Are you going to lift the ban, then?”

He cleared his throat. “I’m considering it. But I need to go there first, look it over. Make sure it’s safe.” He shifted. She looked up and found him watching her. He glanced aside, quickly, and then asked, “Would you like to come along?”

She stared at his profile for a moment, familiar and just a little changed. His hair was longer, his jaw sharper. His eyes were still just as warm. She felt her cheeks heat and looked away. “Sure,” she said, swallowing. “It’ll be just like old times.”

#

They made plans to depart near immediately. Zuko’s guards protested that they ought to go along and were soundly ignored. In the end, only the two of them boarded the airship, a small model designed for speed more than anything.

Katara remembered other trips they’d taken together, just the two of them. She wondered, abruptly, how Zuko healed from the lightning he’d taken to the chest. She couldn’t think of a good way to ask to see it, and the thought made her need to busy her hands.

“So,” she said, wetting her lips, watching the wind whip at his hair, her stomach going tight and hot, “tell me more about this place.”

#

“How long ago did you say the island was abandoned?” Katara asked, as they crossed over the mines set beneath the water. She could see the vague shapes of some of them, dark beneath the clear waves. She wondered how many ships they’d felled and looked past, to the island isn’t, covered with forests, mist clinging to the branches even now, as the day moved along.

A shiver climbed her spine.

“Decades ago,” Zuko said, adjusting the workings of the craft, bringing them lower.

Katara hummed, watching him briefly from the corners of her eyes before turning back to the island, ignoring the heat rising in her cheeks. “I, um,” she frowned, trying to distract her thoughts and succeeding as something strange finally jumped out at her. “I thought this was a shipyard.”

“It was,” he said, even as they cut down through the air, towards the open sand of the beach. He leaned closer, frowning out at the island, where no massive docks stood, where the remains of no ships, abandoned in the midst of production, rusted, where there was nothing but sand and trees and a single tower, rising, closer to the center of the island. “It was _supposed_ to be.”

She looked up at him again - he’d gotten even taller, she noticed - and jerked her gaze back to the beach. “Well, looks like we’ve got ourselves a real mystery.”

#

No answers were immediately obvious when they brought the ship down on the beach, securing her quickly. Zuko leapt out first, swords crossed over his back, and offered her a hand. She took it, not needing it, feeling the curl of his warm fingers around hers.

For a moment, just a moment, they stood there, sinking into the soft sand, listening to the waves wash against the unfamiliar shore. “I wanted to thank you,” Zuko said, staring down at their hands, “again, for coming with me.”

“I’m always happy for an adventure,” she said, too fast, wanting to give him the right answer to the unasked question she could feel better them. Her stomach fluttered around, leaving her feeling strange and uneasy. But it often did that around him. Always had.

He flashed her a fast, brief smile and released her hand. “Good. That’s--we should look for a path. Up into the woods.”

#

Finding the path was difficult. The forest had moved down the beach over the years, growing over whatever traces of human habitation there had once been. In the end, they had to pick their way through, weaving between tree trunks and crunching bracken underfoot as they went.

It was quiet, beneath the trees. Often there was no sound but their breathing, the snap of a branch, and her heartbeat in her ears. That caught her attention, eventually, after a longer period of time than it should have done. She’d been distracted by his shoulders, the line of his back. 

“Zuko,” she said, voice pitching quieter, “there are no birds.” In fact, she thought, pausing to listen.... “I don’t hear any animals at all.”

He stopped walking, bracing a hand on a tree and turning to frown over his shoulder. They stood, silent, listening to nothing. The only sound was the faint noise of the waves in the distance, muffled by the trees.

“Whatever lives here could be frightened of us,” she said, into that quiet void.

“Maybe,” Zuko agreed, starting forward again. “There’s been no one here for decades. We’re probably a surprise.”

Katara nodded, though he wasn’t looking. She tried not to think too hard about other unpopulated places she’d visited in her travels, the way the animals there approached people without fear or trepidation, not knowing enough to fear them.

She adjusted the hang of her bending bag over her shoulder, sweating in the heat that was caught beneath the boughs of the trees, and walked a little faster, listening for any noises and hearing nothing. 

“So,” she said, to fill up the quiet, “what else have you been up to?”

#

They talked of policy changes and the dispersal of some measure of the Fire Nation’s army and treaties and more as they walked. They spoke of the rebuilding of the Southern Water Tribe and conflicts with their sister Tribe to the North and her disagreements with Sokka.

They didn’t talk about Aang.

Katara felt the silence about that subject nearly as keenly as she did the silence of the island. She didn’t ask when Zuko had seen him last. She didn’t mention her last morning with Aang, when the tensions between them had come to a head, when she’d snapped that he didn’t actually seem to like _her_ very much, not her culture, not her beliefs, not her desires for the future, so much as the idea of her, and he’d snapped back that maybe that should tell her something about the weak points in her personality and…

Well. Lots of things had been said that probably could have been put more kindly. But she’d held them all in too long to let them go in a calm voice, and maybe he had, too. At least they were all out in the open, now, even if she didn’t know where that left them.

She wasn’t entirely sure she was even Aang’s friend anymore, which left a dull ache in the center of her chest.

“Here’s something,” Zuko said, from a step in front of her, pushing aside foliage. There was a building beyond, half-consumed by the plant growth, rusting out from the elements. It was long and low to the ground. “A barracks,” he said, making for it.

Katara trailed after, frowning. “This doesn’t look big enough to house the crew of a shipyard.” In fact, it barely looked big enough to house a few dozen people.

The doorway stood open; the door, actually, lay across the ground, hinges rusted away. The windows yawned open like gaping wounds, showing debris inside, burying beds and chairs. Zuko ducked in. “Maybe there are more beyond this,” he said.

Katara felt cold, strangely, even in the heat of the summer day. She stepped into the room and shivered.

A Fire Nation flag lay crumpled in one corner. Beneath the debris - she knelt and pushed it aside gingerly - there were scattered clothes, books, cookware. She half-expected to find bones and char marks, but found neither. “What happened here?” she asked, quiet.

“I’m not sure,” Zuko said, moving towards the darker side of the room, a spot overgrown by the surrounding trees. He stretched a hand out and then said, quietly, “Katara, can you bend?”

“What do you mean?” She frowned over at him. “Of course I--”

“Try,” he said, still staring at his empty hand.

The cold feeling around Katara’s spine grew chillier. She uncorked her bending water, intending to call forth a thin whip, maybe enough to flick back some of his hair, and… nothing happened. “That’s not possible,” she said, pulse speeding up under her skin. 

“It’s happening anyway,” Zuko said, curling his hand up into a fist. “Maybe we should head back.” 

She opened her mouth, not entirely sure what she intended to say, and caught a flash of movement from behind one of the holes in the building, something pale crossing the space, gone in an instant. She jerked towards it, calling, “Zuko!”

“What?” He turned to meet her, dropping the flag he’d been frowning over. He touched her shoulder, hand warm even through the chill settled within her chest.

“I saw something.” She leaned out the gaping hole, but saw no sign of where the thing had gone or where it had come from. “Something fast.”

“Well,” he said. “I guess that answers the question about whether there are animals here or not. They’re just shy.”

“Yeah,” she said, frowning out into the tight press of trees. “I guess. Hey.” She climbed out through the breach; it had once been a window, she thought. “I can see the tower from here.”

“Katara,” he said, grabbing her arm, looking around through the trees. “Maybe we should go back. If we can’t bend…”

“You have your swords,” she said, flashing him a smile that took more effort than she liked. “And non-benders go on adventures all the time. We’re almost there. Maybe whatever is preventing us from bending is in the tower. Maybe we can fix it, figure out what happened here. I don’t really want to leave without getting some answers.”

He hesitated for a moment, and she added, “Everything here is afraid of us, anyway.” She took his hand and tugged.

“Alright,” he said, after a moment, voice thick. But he drew one of the swords at his back, and adjusted his grip on her hand, instead of letting go. Her stomach did somersaults inside her skin. “Let’s go explore, then.”

#

The tower stood at the top of a rise, covered with overgrowth and bracken. Below the plant life, there were signs of a path, here and there, stone and metal pushed up by the roots beneath. They picked their way carefully along, wary of turning an ankle on the tumbled ground. 

The front door to the tower hung open, revealing gaping darkness within. It was several stories high, though the uppermost levels had collapsed. Pieces of the roof and walls lay across the ground, covered with years worth of debris. 

The steps leading up to it were fine, dark stone. Dark vines and roots grew across them.

It didn’t look anything like a shipyard, not just because it was miles from the coast.

“What _was_ this place?” Katara asked, moving forward cautiously. She wished, dearly, that Zuko could bend. They could use the light. She tightened her grip on his hand as she stepped into the tower.

Inside, it felt stuffy, the air too close, despite the fact that the bottom level was almost completely open, just one large room. There was a staircase, set towards one side of the tower, the door they had entered, a number of broken windows, and a section of the rear wall that had collapsed. 

She stepped on something hidden amongst the filth on the floor as she looked around, something that cracked, loudly. There was a scramble of movement from above them in the tower, and Zuko pulled her closer and back, blade at the ready.

Nothing came down the stairs. A moment later, there was a sound of cracking branches from outside, moving away.

She laughed, just a little, a punchy little exhalation. “It’s probably just some lizard-squirrels,” she said, though it had sounded much larger than a lizard-squirrel. 

“Probably,” Zuko said, but he was frowning out the door, and had not eased his grip on his sword. He looked--

“Hey, there are workstations over here,” she said, shaking herself from a contemplation of his jaw. Her cheeks felt over-warm when she turned, tugging away from his grip. In fact, it was hard to tell _exactly_ what had once been in the tower. Everything was broken, fallen to pieces.

But there were books, scattered here and there. Some of them had fallen apart. Or, she considered, kneeling to lift one and examining its condition, torn apart. Still, bits of the writing remained legible. She leaned over the book, frowning, drifting a little closer to one of the windows to catch the failing light. 

The chill inside her chest grew as she read.

“What’s it say?” Zuko asked, snagging her attention back from the confusing manuscript. It had been written in a shaking hand, many of the words smeared either at the time of writing or over the years. 

Still, there was enough there to make her heart beat faster. “I--I think they were doing some kind of experiments here,” she said, swallowing hard, carefully turning a page. “Experiments with the Spirit World.”

Zuko stopped at the foot of the stairs. He’d been slowly moving around the room, blades still drawn. “Experiments? Is that--could that be why we can’t bend?”

“Maybe,” she said scanning down over increasingly muddled words. “Something went wrong. Terribly wrong. Whoever wrote this… didn’t want anyone else to come to the island.” _It is not safe_, the writer had scrawled. _It is not safe, it is not safe, may our children forgive us_.

“Zuko.” She closed the book, curling it close to her chest with one arm. “I think we should--”

There was a flash of movement from the side, through the window. Katara didn’t even have time to turn towards it before something grabbed her. _Multiple_ somethings. Fingers - it felt like fingers, clawed fingers - twisted into her hair, gripped at her shoulders and arms, and pulled.

She cried out, the book falling from her arms as she thrashed, attempting to bend automatically. Her back hit the window frame. The things holding her ripped her over and through, their strength terrible and implacable.

“Katara!”

She hit the ground hard, hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs, and scrambled, trying to grab roots or branches or _something_. She tried to jerk free and felt a hank of her hair tear free in a wash of pain and hot blood. She twisted her head around, trying to get a look and they were--

They were people. Almost people. Thin and spare and naked, with bone-white skin and hanging, tangled hair. Their faces were gaunt, cadaverous. Their dry lips were pulled back from cracked, broken, jagged teeth. Tendons stood in their necks. Their bodies were covered with filth and scars.

She kicked out, too breathless to scream, but she couldn’t tell how many things had her and none were by her feet.

“Let her go!” 

Zuko came through the window, blades drawn, as Katara reached the treeline. They were terribly fast, the things that had her. Branches and thrones caught at her, scraping along her back and arms and legs.

Additional hands grabbed her, dragging her along. They were quiet, whatever they were, quiet and terrible and implacable, claws digging into her skin like hooks. She cried out, horrified, when wet breath washed over her forearm, held in a pale hand, and she felt something cool, something sharp, slide over her skin and realized _it was going to bite her_.

And then there was a hot, wet rush over her shoulder. The grip around her right arm fell away. There was a blur, a flash of red and gold and wet, fleshy sounds. An arm landed in front of her face as she rolled to the side, fingers still twitching. 

She scrambled back, free, suddenly.

Her blood pounded in her ears. She hurt in dozens of places, but the pain felt distant, held at bay by adrenaline as she reached across the ground, seizing a large stick and jerking to her feet. 

Zuko straightened in front of her, twin blades swinging down in a terrible arch, ending with a wet, gurgling sound. 

Bodies lay all around his feet. Pale, twisted, elongated bodies. Many of them moved, still. Katara swallowed, once, twice, and then turned, bent at the waist, and vomited. “Katara!” Hands - warm, gentle hands - lifted her hair back. “Are you alright?”

She spat on the ground, looking up, through the tangle of her hair. It was difficult to get her thoughts to line up. Zuko was staring at her, wide-eyed. There was blood splattered across his face. “They tried to bite me,” she told him. “And they, they clawed at me.” She held up her arm to demonstrate. 

He made a sound, hoarse and terrible, ripping his tunic down, slicing it to pieces with a practiced movement. She watched him bind up the wound, saw her fingers shaking, listened to the gurgle of the bodies behind them, and heard, beyond that, something else.

Movement through the trees.

She twisted her arm around, grabbing his hand. “Zuko,” she said, her voice a quiet rasp, “I don’t think that was all of them.”

For a moment, their eyes met. And then he swore, pushing her forward, back towards the tower. “Run,” he said, twisting to look over his shoulder. “Run fast, Katara.”

She ran. When she’d imagined spending the day alone with Zuko on a deserted island, she’d somehow failed to picture the nightmare scramble that followed, shoving through the abandoned tower, tripping over roots, snagged by trees and imagined hands every step of the way.

She struggled for breath, heart hammering against her ribs, listening to the crash of Zuko behind her and, beyond him, the sound of many, many other beings, moving through the woods. She ignored the pain in her ribs and the protests of her legs and ran faster.

She expected, somehow, that they would arrive at the beach and find the things swarming all over the airship. But it waited where they had left it. She sprinted for it, tripping on the sand, shoving back up, grabbed by Zuko and half-lifted to her feet.

She didn’t look back, didn’t dare, not until she’d reached the airship and thrown herself in, scrambling over the side as Zuko leapt to follow, hurrying directly to the controls. Katara gripped the metal railing, watching _things_ come out of the woods after them, moving in a strange hunch, drool running down their terrible faces, their dark eyes far too wide.

“Zuko,” she said, as they charged across the sand, clawed hands raised, mouths wide. She reached a hand back, blindly, grabbing the back of his tunics. “Zuko--!”

One of the creatures reached the craft, and Katara found the handle of one of Zuko’s swords, stabbing and slashing at it, she’d never learned to use a sword, knew only the basics from watching Sokka and--and it didn’t truly matter.

Zuko kept his blades sharp, and the thing didn’t make any attempt to fend her off. It fell to the sand, gurgling, but there were more beyond it, many more. Katara yelled at them, adjusting her grip, and finally, finally, they began to rise in the air.

She cut back a few that tried to hold on, hacking at them desperately, until they were too high, far enough away, and then she stumbled back from the edge, gulping at the air.

She bumped into Zuko, her shoulder colliding with his chest, and he said, “Katara, are you--”

She turned into him, smelling blood on his tunic when she buried her face against his shoulder, gripping at him. He froze, just for a moment, before curling his arms around her, gentle, not squeezing. She felt a brief touch against the crown of her head, soft as only a kiss could be, and pushed closer, closing her eyes.

“I think,” she said, after a moment, when she could breathe again. “That you definitely shouldn’t settle that island.”

“Agreed,” he said, tucking her a little closer, resting his cheek against the side of her head as they both caught their breath.

**Author's Note:**

> Got a [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/glimmerglanger).


End file.
